Re: Topicality: James Harris and surrogate factoring (vote)
From: Proginoskes (proginoskes_at_email.msn.com)
Date: 04/07/05
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Date: 7 Apr 2005 14:42:50 -0700
Juuso Hukkanen wrote:
> [...]
> Below are some quick quotes from past couple of days.
> I think these are more insulting than educating /
> co-working. No one deserves to read this kind of texts
> about ones scientific achievments. First comment is
> from you today.
> [...]
> > www.crank.net/megalomaniacs.html [...]
>
> Hey, James! We found a website for your SF paper!
>
> --- Christopher Heckman
Yes, I have to admit this one was just cruel. However, I do like my
response to ...
> >> Yeah, a "crank" with one paper accepted then rejected,
>
> Submitting papers with errors in them doesn't count.
> You're at 0, bucko.
The thing is that most people would be embarassed if they submitted a
paper with an error in it. JSH brags about it, maybe because that
really is the high point of his mathematical interests.
> now say how much productivity were those intended to create. Yes
> there are educating and correcting instructions.
> >It seems that the discussion is more about hurting (the human rights
> >of) James Harris than discussing science.
And this has been a common theme to my posts. In the beginning, I
approached his prime-counting function with an open mind and found that
it did work. (I didn't feel like I had enough ring theory to talk about
his paper that got pulled.) But his responses to this are simply
hostile.
Another thing I've said is for him to take some math classes,
especially a logic class. This would help to show what a proof really
is and how to put one together, to show why everyone's saying his
"analysis" isn't good enough. He e-mailed Lagarias, asking for help for
the "hard part" (so JSH says), and I imagine Lagarias had the same
attitude, that it would be much better if JSH did it himself.
I've also told him to take his work to a math professor at a local
university, one with an open mind, and go over it with him/her.
I've also told him about "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", which illustrates
why, if you publicly announce a lot of things which are later shown to
be false, then when you do have something that's true, no one will
believe it.
In short, JSH seems to be his own worst enemy.
He continues saying things that have been shown to be true, not
understanding what's going on. When he can't argue mathematics with
people like Nora Baron, he brings out THE HAMMER and talks about people
storming universities some day. When I mention there's a paper that has
"his" prime-counting function in it, he says his is different, but
never bothers to explain why or how, despite me giving him the journal
name and year so he can look it up. He evidently doesn't understand
what "put up or shut up" means.
Now, -- and I know this is a long post -- what to do? If you personally
don't want to read his posts, enter him into your killfile. Censorship
is not the answer here; he has as much of a right as anyone else to
post here. He just doesn't seem to accept responsibility for it, which
is the other side of the coin.
Will his posts clog up sci.math and sci.crypt? If he has access to the
Internet all day, then maybe, but I don't put him on the level of
automatic spammers. (However, someone could conceivably write a program
to do so.) He has retreated from alt.math.recreational (where I first
ran into him), and since he has his own Google Group (called Surrogate
Factoring), he may be content to just post there.
The one thing I don't like about his Google Group is that membership is
restricted, not like most of Usenet. That means that if he finds a
clear-cut argument showing why SF doesn't work, he can simply ignore
it, and no one will find out.
In closing, JSH once asked why people in sci.math responded to his
posts. I answered with something like: Otherwise, people may come
across the archived posts and think there's actually something there.
Not everyone knows that "the ability to type on a keyboard is no
indication of sanity, intelligence, or common sense."
--- Christopher Heckman
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